Re: i18n and Unicode/10646

David Goldsmith (david_goldsmith@taligent.com)
Tue, 6 Dec 1994 17:48:05 -0800

At 5:34 PM 12/6/94, Larry Masinter wrote:
>> Another issue with using straight Unicode is that the MIME spec (at least,
>> the new draft version) specifies that all subtypes of the "text" content
>> type must use CRLF (0x0D 0x0A) line feed conventions, which rules out any
>> character set that does not use ASCII as a base, and certainly rules out a
>> 16 bit character set like Unicode.
>
>Perhaps you can be specific about draft states this. As far as I can
>tell, the rule for "text" and end-of-line only are for those text
>types that use charset=US-ASCII.

>From the latest draft, draft-ietf-822ext-mime-imb-01.txt:

>6.1.1.1. Representation of Line Breaks
>
>The canonical form of any MIME text type MUST represent a line
>break as a CRLF sequence. Similarly, any occurrence of CRLF
>in text MUST represent a line break. Use of CR and LF outside
>of line break sequences is also forbidden.
>
>This rule applies regardless of format or character set or
>sets involved.

CRLF is defined elsewhere as being the exact octet sequence 0x0D 0x0A.

This was all discussed on the ietf-822 mailing list at some length, and the
consensus seemed to be that this was a necessary evil for compatibility
with existing software. I would have preferred a different approach, but
that's not how it turned out.

----------------------------
David Goldsmith
david_goldsmith@taligent.com
Senior Scientist
Taligent, Inc.
10201 N. DeAnza Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014-2233